'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Jean Paul Sartre interviews Daniel Cohn-Bendit: May 20, 1968

This conversation
between Jean-Paul Sartre and Daniel Cohn-Bendit was first published in Le nouvel observateur on May 20, 1968.
The translation, by B.R. Brewster, was collected in The Student
Revolt: The Activists Speak(Panther Books, London:1968), edited
by Hervé Bourges. It was previously published online at Medium.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Within a few days, although no-one called
for a general strike, France has been practically paralysed by work stoppages
and factory occupations. And all because the students took control of the
streets in the Latin Quarter. What is your analysis of the movement you have
unleashed? How far can it go?

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: It has grown much larger than we could have
foreseen at the start. The aim is now the overthrow of the regime. But it is
not up to us whether or not this is achieved. If the Communist Party, the CGT
and the other union headquarters shared it there would be no problem; the
regime would fall within a fortnight, as it has no counterthrust against a
trial of strength supported by all working-class forces… read more:

In 1969, The
Black Dwarf published an issue on "The Year of the Militant
Woman," under the editorship of Sheila Rowbotham. Reproduced below is the
centrepiece article of the issue, Rowbotham's powerful manifesto of women's
liberation - an article which broke new ground on the left in Britain. As
Rowbotham wrote later, "everyday details such as these were not part of
the language of politics in 1969."